


Oh the Places They will Go

by fresne



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people believe that imaginary places are vast countries sprawling with dense jungles thick with tendrilled creatures and dry red ruins that glow under the horns of double moons and cliff riddled cities and city riddled cliffs and all over echoed with purple moors. </p><p>Most people are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. </p><p>Wrong! No, seriously, its the small spaces that give the best shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh the Places They will Go

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through season 2 Sherlock. Also, certain spoilers based on ACD Fanon and the ACD's "Empty House".  
> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> Fantasy realms:  
> Oh, the Places They will Go - Dr. Seus' "Oh The Places You Will Go"  
> Narnia - CS. Lewis' "Narnia" books  
> Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"/"Through the Looking Glass"  
> Shakoor - Count Duckula, because why not  
> Barsoom - Edgar Rice Burrough's "John Carter" books. Well, that's the source of the four armed green man  
> Atlantis - Stargate Atlantis, while the city sat off of San Francisco  
> Gondal and Gaaldine - Bronte children juvenilia. Inspired by AJ Hall's "Sherlock" Gondal fusion.  
> Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, and Glubbdubdrib - Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"  
> Pellucidar - Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Hollow Earth"  
> Lodi, New Jersey - A real place, although the Soprano's Bada Bing bar is not.  
> Shangri La - James Hilton's "Lost Horizon"  
> The Pub Where Everyone Knew His Name - Not Cheers

Most people believe that imaginary places are vast countries sprawling with dense jungles thick with tendrilled creatures and dry red ruins that glow under the horns of double moons and cliff riddled cities and city riddled cliffs and all over echoed with purple moors. 

Most people are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong! What must it be like in those tiny little minds that cannot imagine small spaces? Who cannot imagine the library basement’s dusty extra row of books out of the corner of the eye? Who couldn’t envision climbing over the wall of the secret garden full of wick? Who would never stop to look for 221B between 237 and 241 on Upper Baker street, or between 215 and 229 on alternate Thursdays?

Ah, well. The blue plaque on the wall waited patiently for its inhabitants. The seventeen steps gathered dust. The violin perched enthroned on a leaning tower of books. The skull grinned at an empty room. They waited for the door to be seen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
The first time John saw Harry drunk, she was in a wardrobe. 

No, that’s not quite right. It had been a forest.

No, that was still not quite right, because there had been a wardrobe.

The summer he’d been ten and she’d been twelve, they’d gone to stay for a month with a cousin in Oxford while their parents had some “alone time”. That was adult for break all the plates and yell. It was all fine.

Their cousin made them eat broccoli and talk about the Brontes. Their cousin’s house was this amazing metastasized frankenhouse on the edge of a wood, which was better than fine. 

It was an adventure. 

John loved it. Every day, he’d set out on an expedition, while Harry did whatever Harry did.

At the end of the first week, John discovered the wardrobe in the attic. Although, to be fair, Harry found it first. 

It was full of musty old fur coats and pine trees. He followed Harry’s footprints through the mud, and he was feeling pretty good about his heretofore unknown tracking abilities when he found her with them. She was nestled into a pile of sleeping girls, which maybe ought to have been interesting. They were wearing sheets and had battered grape vines tangled in their curly hair. Red wine stained their faces and almost breasts. Red wine and something else red. There was a body in the meadow grass.

No, that was not quite right. There were parts of a body. One girl slept clutching an arm that twitched and moved in her grasp. Another arm slowly pulled itself through a patch of daffodils to be closer to its twin. There were long and short intestines strung like bunting in a tree. Bloody bunting that slid and swayed the branches as it crawled down the tree trunk.

He wondered if there was a way to put the body back together again. If there was, he didn’t know it.

He didn’t say anything. He walked away until he sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking a shining sea. A giant lion talked to him about the yearly renewal of spring and the rebirth of Dionysus and other things he didn’t care about.

After that, he explored the woods outside the house, even when it rained. When it was time to go home, Harry spent the entire train ride back crying because she’d never be able to go back.

John held her hand and it was all fine. 

Except for the part where she never stopped looking for a way to get back in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
The first time Sherlock argued with Sherringford, they were in a looking glass.

That was a horribly archaic way of saying mirror, but Sherringford liked to use old words when there were far more precise ones available. He perambulated and never walked. He'd yell, "The beans are in flower," and do a handstand. Sherlock enjoyed handstands. They were interesting.

The year they were eight, Mummy took them to visit their Great-great Aunt Alice, who lived in an old house by the sea. Mummy explained that their Great-great Aunt Alice was extremely old and that they should be very nice to her.

Mycroft smiled and folded his hands together to show how polite he would be. Sherringford and Sherlock sighed and let Mummy stuff them into velvet suits with short trousers. Sherringford liked Great-great Aunt Alice. So, Sherlock grudgingly did too. She could tell them apart, which was unusual. She was completely insane and sang songs about sealing wax and Bononcini or Handel's Messiah, which made Sherringford laugh. Sherlock thought it was interesting that she one milk white eye.

While Mummy was busy telling Great-great Aunt Alice about how clever Mycroft was and the prizes that he’d won in school for being a prat, Sherringford made a break for it in the looking glass that sat in the parlor. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, because if Sherringford didn’t have to sit through tea, then he didn’t either. He dived after him.

At first it was interesting eating cakes that made him small enough to sit in Sherringford’s hand or drinking sweet liquid that made Sherlock as large as a house.

Sherringford certainly enjoyed it. He laughed and giggled with the Mad Hatter and threw tea cups at the March Hare. Sherlock was so bored that he wanted to fall asleep with the Dormouse. It made no sense. There was nothing to deduce. Nothing meant anything. Sherringford said, "That's because it all means everything."

Which was how they had their first fight. Sherlock left Sherringford laughing over mushrooms. He climbed out of the mirror and kicked its frame for good measure. The mirror cracked.

Later Mummy asked him where Sherringford had gone off to and he pointed at the mirror. She slapped him for lying and cracking the mirror. Great-great Aunt Alice laughed. She had brown teeth from drinking black tea. Mummy and Mycroft looked all over the house, and then the police looked, but they couldn’t find Sherringford anywhere. Mainly because they refused to look in the mirror, which was not only stupid, but raised everyone to new levels of imbecilic.

Great-great Aunt Alice died three weeks later, which Sherlock wished he could have seen. She left the house to Sherringford with a trust to maintain the house. Although, since he rarely came out of the mirror, Sherlock thought that was a bit of a waste. 

Sometimes, Sherringford visited when Sherlock was thick in morphine syrup hallucinations or rattling his bones with cocaine. But it took more and more and they always argued until Sherlock was as flat as a crepe. He stopped trying.

Sometimes Sherlock saw his other self grinning from the mirror and he looked away. He walked away from those mirrors and made up an experiment in non-reflection. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
The first to arrive was Mrs. Hudson. Nursing a black eye and clutching her purse. Still, even with her right eye half swollen shut, her left was sharp. She noticed the blue plaque embedded in the brick wall. She sighed when she saw it.

221B sighed to be seen. It wasn’t that a door appeared, because there was always a door, but she pushed it open and poked her head inside. She trilled out, “Hello,” to the waiting seventeen steps. A vacuum was always there at the bottom of the stairs. She flexed her fingers around the worn plastic handle. Her index finger lingered on the melted spot on the tip and made some order. 221B obediently gave up of centuries of dust. Put up dents in walls over waiting tubs of spackle with handy spackle knives. Cracked tiles for replacing.

She went away. Sometimes for months. But she always came back. Battered and with a book of wallpaper samples.

There was a deed under the skull. She’d find it when she was ready. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
It was on the morning that he’d been awake for thirty-four hours in a row, three months into his deployment to Shakoor, that John saw the green four armed man climb one of the hills above the base. He had to have been at least ten feet tall. 

John clutched his coffee, blinked at the thick waves of tired in his eyes, and watched the green man climb over red rocks up to a Moghul ruin halfway up the hill. He should have gone to sleep. Sleep was precious. He knew that already. He knew that it was unlikely that there was actually a four armed giant green man. Medical school had already taught him plenty about sleep deprivation.

Still, he watched until the green man disappeared into the red ruin.

He never went up there. He never had time. 

He saved a lot of people and that was good. It was what he was there to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Sitting in his far too cramped bedsit over a chip shop, Sherlock shut out the sound of traffic and the smell of grease. He was studying the latest Google Earth images to update the surface of the globe in his memory palace. For while extraterrestrial phenomena lacked relevance, a complete knowledge of the Earth often resulted in useful connections. Also, it was interesting to spin the globe in his mind.

That was how Sherlock noticed the invisible city located near the Farallon Islands. It was obvious from the changes in the shipping patterns, tides, the birds, really there were hundreds of clues.

It was mildly interesting that Travis Air Force base located north of San Francisco had recently acquired a rather staggering number of astrophysicists, botanists, linguists and sociologists to their roster and quadrupled their requisitions. However, unless there was a string of invisible murders, Sherlock could not be bothered to care.

Mycroft thanked Mr. Woolsey for the tour. Sometimes he was the IOA too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Sherlock came next . He swirled in a great brood of coat and ennui. 

221B straightened its door frames and tried to be interesting. Filled with smoke. Tried not to catch on fire. Sherlock experimented on the walls. On the floor. On the ceiling. The attic was not safe. The seventeen steps treaded for wear. Mrs. Hudson twittered over him and offered him a cup of tea, just with this once. He stabbed his correspondence to the mantle and made friends with the skull. The skull did not recite Shakespearean quotations. It prefered marvels. Sherlock tuned the Strad and played long past when the neighbors blinked and wondered how long there had been another house in their row. 

The upstairs room was empty until John moved in with quiet steady boxes that hid a gun. Bullets. A bag for house calls. John smiled out his window at the plane tree. 221B made sure to keep his view pleasant. He'd need it.

221B was invaded. Every other day. Secret agents and spies and governments and older brother and police and seekers and adventuresses and criminal masterminds. It was love, being invaded. 221B loved it down to the pipes in its walls.

But still. But then.

They left. First Sherlock and then John. Until the thin line was Mrs. Hudson, her hand trembling on the door of the flat at the top of seventeen stairs.

England wouldn't fall if Mrs. Hudson left, but 221B might have dried up and blown away. She vacuumed the stairs.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Six months after Sherlock died, John went on a package tour. Something to get away from the papers and the rain. 

It was a cruise. Everyone loved a cruise. It didn’t crash and that was good. Fine. It was fine. He stared at the sea birds as they sailed out of port and thought about a great black coat flapping its way down streets. He attended lectures on their ports of call. 

He learned about the history of Gondal, Gaaldine, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, and Glubbdubdrib. Well, that would have been a stretch to say he learned. He heard, but he found himself looking at the other passengers and wondering what Sherlock would have seen. 

He didn’t end up going ashore in any of them. He’d head down the gangplank and walk down the pier and stop. He’d find himself turning around and going back to the ship. Just him and the geriatric set sitting on the deck watching birds call out over the sea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since Sherlock was dead, it had to be Sigerson, the Norwegian extreme travel writer, that went all over the world. He went to the North Pole and from there to Pellucidar. It was dull. The dinosaurs were marginally interesting, but there was no one to say, “Amazing! Extraordinary!” Everything was amazing and he felt ordinary. People lived in caves. They smashed each other over the head and said, “Ook, me kill him.” There was nothing to induce, deduce, and it was not conducive to thought. He finished Mycroft's little errand and left.

He traveled to north India and spoke with the Dalai Lama. They talked about the dead being consumed by birds. It was something to do.

He went to Tibet and where the road forked, he went right. He went up the pass and on into Shangri La. It was boring. He was bored. He left and watched vultures eat the dead, but this was not where he was meant to be.

Sigerson became Arcangelo Corelli, the Italian violinist. He found his way to the opera house in Lodi, New Jersey, where Ms. Norton sang soprano. He played, while she sang, which is to say he and Ms. Norton tangled with the Mafia. Entangled them as children play with yarn, and with about as much restraint. It was something to do. 

He continued the work of heading home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John crouched next to Sherlock in the dark and waited for someone to shoot animatronic Sherlock. The dark outline of animatronic Sherlock twitched and jerked against the bright cheer of 221B as Mrs. Hudson worked his gears. 

Sherlock crouched next to John in the dark and listened to John's quiet breathing. 

Lestrade was there too. He longed for a cigarette.

The villain had made his shot and was roundly arrested by long suffering Lestrade, who took him off to New Scotland Yard. After which, Lestrad headed to a pub where everyone knew his name. His first name, which made for a pleasant change.

Meanwhile, the denizens of 221B went home. John popped around the corner to the wine shop (if card tables covered in bottles of plonk made a wine shop). In the entry, Sherlock didn’t not look at the mirror. He didn't particularly not look at it either. 

John climbed the seventeen steps. Sherlock climbed the seventeen steps.

The skull on the mantle grinned at them and the knife on the mantle waited with its very old impaled correspondence. 

Mrs. Hudson briskly swept away the last of the broken glass and taped some cardboard over the window. “I’ll have you know that’s coming out of your rent.” She had tears on her face and she smiled through them. “Just this once, I’ll make some tea.”

Sherlock picked up the violin that had waited in its case. He tuned it. He played a jig, while John spun Mrs. Hudson once around the room in a laughing waltz. 221B didn’t care that that made no melodic sense.

They were home. 

221B glowed down to the gaslight pipes of its bones.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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